An interesting experiment and indeed correct in that we are still evolving, however to attribute it to the Victorian, matter-based, Darwinian model of evolution is backward-thinking and flawed given the recent leaps and bounds in metaphysical sciences and physical historical evidence disproving linear evolution. The ideology we randomly mutated from ocean slime to our knuckle-dragging neanderthal long-long lost cousins to our current incarnation is one that’s been dogmatically accepted into mainstream evolutionary hegemony without challenge until recent years.

“Linear evolution”? “Metaphysical sciences”? WTF? So she makes up a bizarre caricature of evolution and claims it’s been disproven (true; I don’t know anyone who believes that BS), and then credits metaphysics with providing evidence against it? Weird, but a typical egotistical creationist.

If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering how long it will take her to bring up Hitler. The answer is 5; it’s in the fifth paragraph.

“If you take Darwinian theory, make a ‘scientific’ principal out of it, put it into political action, then you have something like Nazi Germany” states the pioneering Dr Bruce Lipton, author of Spontaneous Evolution. Lipton believes it’s ‘cooperation not competition’ which are the hallmarks of most natural orders.

But back to Ellen Grace Jones. If you read her piece, I should warn you that every link tosses you into a rabbit hole of pure lunacy, so forgive the brief detour.

The latest science suggests we are intelligently designed – not by some sentient humanistic being from on high – moreover a higher, energetic, source intelligence. Einstein’s Unified Field theory equation was completed in 2007. The breakthrough proves everything: matter (which derives from energy, which is what we’re made from) all natural laws and processes link to one underlying, unifying consciousness – aka, God, Source, Allah, Yaweh – pick your favourite.

I’m sure physicists will all be pleased and a little bit surprised to learn that we’ve had a unified field theory for the past 5 years. I’m sorry to disappoint you all, but it was discoverd by John Hagelin, “leading particle and quantum physicist” — yep, it’s another rabbit hole. Hagelin’s obsession is transcendental meditation. This “unifying consciousness” nonsense ain’t physics or math…it’s religion. Skip it.

There is no wooish bullshit that Ellen Grace Jones won’t mistake for creme brulee. Marrying Mayan numerology to Aquarian utopianism? You betcha.

One explicit way in which mankind is evolving for sure is in terms of our consciousness. From the Arab Spring, to #Occupy, to other measured dissent, there is a huge global shift and awakening to the corrupt, control system matrix we’ve been locked into for so long.

The Maya, who were acute astronomers, mathematicians and scientists knew this and their precise Long Count calendar not just tracked time, but evolution of consciousness. The much discussed end of it being December 21st 2012. Contrary to Hollywood fear-mongering, it doesn’t connote the ‘end of the world’, moreover the transition into a more enlightened, evolved age.

Vibrations and signals from space? Of course!

Everything is energy – including us. Life is the interaction of magnetic vibrational fields and our evolution is subject to the cosmos, not random selection. There have been peak sunspot emissions and coronal mass ejections in 2012 so it’s little surprise humankind is awakening.

Mangled history and crackpot archaeology? It’s all here!

Off the coast of Yonaguni Japan, India and Cuba there are giant sunken megalithic sites and pyramidal structures. In Bosnia Europe’s first pyramid was discovered and dated to 10,000 years plus. Geologist Dr Robert Schoch has accurately dated the Sphinx to be 7-9,000BC – throwing our mainstream historical timeline into chaos and in need of serious re-writing.

I’ve been saying it for a long time, but I’ll repeat it for you again: the Huffington Post is a mega-sleazy slushpile of credulous crap and unedited stream-of-consciousness burbling from idiots. It is evolving, though: it’s evolving to fill the niche left behind by the demise of Weekly World News.

Send Ellen Grace Jones back to the runway, where sometimes fatuous idiocy might get mistaken for creativity, and where pretense and arrogance can masquerade as taste.

Comments

It turned out the key to the whole thing was to wear those two-color 3D glasses all the time. Not only do they allow you to see two-dimensional images in three dimensions, they allow you to see three dimensions as four-dimensional.
The only side effect is they make it hard to match your socks, which caused Einstein no end of grief.

“If you take Darwinian theory, make a ‘scientific’ principal out of it, put it into political action, then you have something like Nazi Germany”

No, if you do that, and insist that society really is a battle to the death between the fit and the unfit, you have ‘Social Darwinism’ — a term used to justify the social and economic policies of the late 1800s in the United States which allowed the rich to get away with anything and the poor were screwed. Today, the exact same economic theology is with us as libertarianism. And it still doesn’t work.

The latest science suggests we are intelligently designed – not by some sentient humanistic being from on high – moreover a higher, energetic, source intelligence.

There is no wooish bullshit that Ellen Grace Jones won’t mistake for creme brulee. Marrying Mayan numerology to Aquarian utopianism? You betcha.

I’m starting to suspect that “reasoning” in crank terms on one subject can lead to a physical transformation in people’s brains that makes it easier to fall into crank thinking and difficult to reason properly in general.

“If you take Darwinian theory, make a ‘scientific’ principal out of it, put it into political action, then you have something like Nazi Germany”

Just think, all you have to do is to take it totally out of its legitimate context, find someone who will be a scientific “principal” (was Hitler a scientific principal?), and turn it into an abomination that serves your prejudices.

Having read Orac’s blog every day for the last few years I knew HuffPo was pretty awful but this is pretty amazingly awful. This article is just as bad as those in my local alt med rags. On par with the article I recently read in one that claimed that most of the universe was “black matter” and said you should Google the term (I did, and did not find anything, “Dark matter” on the other hand finds plenty of hits), and that it proved that their quantum bullshit was real.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO— oh wow, it’s been dead for a while, I need to get out more.

Yeah, she dropped the ball right off the bat with the “knuckle-dragging neanderthal” bit, considering not only were neanderthals not “knuckle-draggers” in any sense but I’m pretty sure we didn’t actually come from them. But wait, “until recent years”? Even if it was “dogmatically accepted” (lol) until recently, wouldn’t that mean that… gasp, it changed?! Perhaps even because of new data??!

Man, we really suck at this dogmatic hegemony thing, jeez.

I like how all her choices for the “intelligent designer” are either Abrahamic gods or so vague that not even the New Agers would use it except when trying to convince other people of agreeing with them.

A proud tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist, when not expanding her consciousness (or getting her geek on) on metaphysics, spirituality and astrology Ellen is a compulsive vintage hoarder, part time kleptomaniac, gin-swilling, social-media reluctant pop culture junkie and never in danger of falling off her soap box about something.`

Everything is energy – including us. Life is the interaction of magnetic vibrational fields and our evolution is subject to the cosmos, not random selection. There have been peak sunspot emissions and coronal mass ejections in 2012 so it’s little surprise humankind is awakening.

Quoted for sheer kook density.

Not only does she fail entirely to make sense, but she can’t even read:

Dr Virpi Lummaa, from the University of Sheffield’s department of animal and plant sciences, said: “We have shown advances have not challenged the fact that our species is still evolving, just like all the other species ‘in the wild’. It is a common misunderstanding that evolution took place a long time ago, and that to understand ourselves we must look back to the hunter-gatherer days of humans.”

Dr Lummaa’s archaic suggestion we should, “look back to the hunter-gatherer days of humans” to understand ourselves is dangerously reductionist.

Oh no, no — not religion. Not according to this view. Religion is part of the problem. It’s just as bad as scientism. They’re both extremes:

“The problem with the Darwinian vs Creationist altercation is because it’s so polarised. Atheists feel obliged to cling onto the Darwinian model because until now the only answer was a religious, faith-based one which they negate.’

You see? This lovely cupcake is in the middle. That’s because she’s not pushing religion, dualism, and the “sentient humanistic being on high” — she’s enlightened! She’s spiritual! Not religious. Really.

“Mystics, contrary to religionists, are always saying that reality is not two things – God and the world – but one thing, consciousness.”

Idealistic monists like Jones like to make an impressive show of their huge distinction from substance dualism — but of course it cashes out as more or less the same thing. And yes, it’s a form of religion, and yes, the “highly-charged, energised space between things” she’s prattling on about is just as supernatural — and just as unscientific — as the traditional God figures. It’s a variation on God, and a variation on Creationism, which fools nobody but the believers themselves.

I usually modify the term “religion” into “religion/spirituality.” That’s to forestall smug little objections coming from the Spiritual Left on the theme of “MY version of God is different and I bet you’d be okay with what I’m saying if you just saw how it works with science.” No, science is not supporting or arriving at or about to break into this sort of nonsense. And this sort of nonsense if anything pisses me off EVEN MORE than the usual nonsense.

before I discovered this blog I would periodically be optimistic and upbeat about what was going on in the world and the outlook for a positive future. That took a lot of work on my part having grown up during the cold war and was in high school during the Cuban Missile crisis.
Reading about people like this who seem to get some credibility enough so that they get publicized threatens to bring on the old hopeless depressed state of mind again.

Is this how they’re going to play it in the 21st century ? I guess the ether thing has gone out of fashion. This century, we’re going to play unifying consciousness instead. Got to be wafting in something.

“There have been peak sunspot emissions and coronal mass ejections in 2012 so it’s little surprise humankind is awakening.”
Oh for fuck’s sake!
Where does this vacuous bullshit come from? There must be a throbbing vein (I know…veins don’t throb, usually) of stupid being tapped into somewhere.
(Apologies, first post…hope nobody’s offended by the fuck etc….)

All you people need to calm down and see that Ellen Grace Jones has superior access to the n-rays that come from the Cosmic Consciousness. If you take a look at this picture of her, you will see the antenna she uses to receive the part of n-ray spectrum that gives her access to the Cosmic Truthiness.

What’s weird and stupid, but still somehow predictable for a creationist, is saying evolution is a random process and blaming Hitler on evolution, but to blame evolution for Hitler you need to understand natural selection, in which case you know the first argument is fallacious. Just evidence that they aren’t the ones coming up with these arguments, I suppose, they’re just stealing them from other creationists.

I was going to get behind your “she’s just a fashion editor” sentiment, but then I remembered that religious apologists could do the same to me, as I am but a lowly shoe salesman with no degree. Science damn it!

“Ellen Grace Jones” — Now there’s a mouthful. Wonder how the real Grace Jones feels about it? She’s billed by Huff&Puff as an “arts and socio-political writer” but her website, The Real Runaway, seems to be just fashion and celebrities. Hardly arts and certainly no “socio-political” but it’s no surprise that Huff&Puff lies. Me thinks EGJ is hoping to be a celeb herself.

before I discovered this blog I would periodically be optimistic and upbeat about what was going on in the world and the outlook for a positive future. That took a lot of work on my part having grown up during the cold war and was in high school during the Cuban Missile crisis.
Reading about people like this who seem to get some credibility enough so that they get publicized threatens to bring on the old hopeless depressed state of mind again.

+1

still, you have to admit the crazy is so extreme it lifts one’s spirits a bit just because it’s so damn funny.

And with that, I am off to bed. I cannot cope with this level of woo tonight. My hungover brain is too weak. I am going to watch an episode of The Wire on my iPhone (not an iPad…my problems are very first world), and try to suppress the boiling torrent of moron induced bile.

Of course this does give some credence to the idea that ID isn’t necessarily just an Abrahamic belief. The junk they want to teach in the US (or the “weaknesses” which are so much creationist claptrap) is, but clearly dumbass pantheistic notions can be pro-ID, too.

I suppose the IDiots could use her article to try to argue that ID isn’t necessarily Xian, but even they’d have a hard time ignoring the cretinous nonsense in the article, not because it’s so stupid rather because it’s so heretical.

I would say, nevertheless, that although ID is clearly religious/spiritual (when it’s not merely naive thinking, yet those cases should mostly clear up with a bit of knowledge), it’s not all merely a reincarnation of “creation science.” The IDiots wish it were, but it could easily turn against them as it became a cesspool of all of the woo and pseudoscience that has hit the pop scene.

I love all the talk about Age of Aquarius and the awakening of Psychic humanity or whatever. Not because I believe in it but because I get to make endless Gundam references and ask if our souls will be freed from gravity and gender roles or other such goofy fan things.

Newage crap is fun when you don’t believe in it, but poisonous enough it needs to be fought.

Apparently “It’s a blog post, not a news story or a feature. The blogs section is a social media platform – we just host blog posts. It’s like Twitter, but we give people more than 140 characters per post.”

So that’s ok then. The fact that a ‘news’ outlet allows random people to just post whatever they like with the apparent implicit endorsement of that outlet even when that post contains more lies than the average republican stump speech is a total non-issue…

Doesn’t matter a bit…

Please excuse me while I go stand in the rain until the steam stops coming out my ears…

An interesting experiment and indeed correct in that we are still evolving, however to attribute it to the Victorian, matter-based, Darwinian model of evolution is backward-thinking and flawed given the recent leaps and bounds in metaphysical sciences and physical historical evidence disproving linear evolution.

I see we have a strong new contender in the pseudoscience track and field event for the next word salad olympics.

The fact that a ‘news’ outlet allows random people to just post whatever they like with the apparent implicit endorsement of that outlet even when that post contains more lies than the average republican stump speech is a total non-issue…

I try to tell people when the subject of “web news” outlets comes up that their purpose is not to provide information. The commodity they’re selling is our eyeballs: page views, registered users, number of comments. All of these figures directly or indirectly into their advertising revenue. That’s where their money comes from. HuffPo and Big Think and others need something “controversial” to make people angry enough to comment (verifying that the site has lots of registered users – a number they can present to current and prospective advertisers). But they can not make everything they publish word salad olympics (thank you for that one, G Greenwood) or no one will bother with them. HuffPo, for example, does some high quality political reporting (sometimes).

The days of paper and ink when editors and fact checkers worked to maintain a publication’s reputation as a reliable source of verified factual information and news outlets employed journalists of integrity and wit have largely ended. The current web business model pretty much requires a web “news” outlet to make sure some of its content will piss people off. Asinine woo does the trick. It’s a feature, not a bug.

sadunlap, #68:
“The days of paper and ink when editors and fact checkers worked to maintain a publication’s reputation as a reliable source of verified factual information and news outlets employed journalists of integrity and wit have largely ended. The current web business model pretty much requires a web “news” outlet to make sure some of its content will piss people off. Asinine woo does the trick. It’s a feature, not a bug.”

I agree.
I think you also have the right of it when you use the words ‘integrity’, ‘wit’ and above all, ‘reputation’.

If shallow, witless charlatans were pilloried in the national media, maybe some of this incredible ass-hattery would subside.
However, in an effort to appear ‘even handed’, the majority of news outlets have apparently confused un-biased reporting with a propensity to present dissenting and scientifically baseless opinions and beliefs as valid counter arguments to rigorous science.

The other thing stirring this shit stew is the desire for most for a quick, easily digestible pap of short soundbites, containing comforting sops to established beliefs.

So, are we screwed? I just found this blog….Thanks Dr Myers…and now have a glimmer of hope.

Serious question. I read Huffpo a fair bit purely for their political section which summarises US politics in a way that’s easy to digest for someone who doesn’t live in the US. Yes I know half their articles are linked to somewhere else and they’re very heavily biased to the left but that makes a nice change from most US news.

So can anyone recommend other sites that do something similar but with a more balanced perspective and are less mired in The Eternal Swamp of Woo?

Using Google fu to search for variations on “Balanced US News” doesn’t get me very far ;P

You know, when someone says, “Darwin was wrong and we need to update our model of evolution”, I get hopeful. Perhaps a discussion of the discovery of DNA, and how Darwin’s ‘gemmule’ business was way off the mark, even if he was (mostly) correct about natural selection? Maybe a discussion of the complex genetics of transposons discovered by Barbara McClintock (see A Feeling For the Organism)? The kind of thing that would help people understand how nasty viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria evolve on factory farms. As well as a little Darwin dethroning, a taking down from the pedestal for removal to Newton’s company – the old guy would probably appreciate it, you know.

But no, rank fucking bullshit it is. What’s particularly foul is the flawed discussion of competition vs. cooperation in natural selection (for example ‘group selection’). Note particularly that “cooperation” may sound like lovey-dovey New Age wonderfulness, but Hitler would never have gotten anywhere without a whole lot of cooperation from the German people (and a host of German and American industrialists and robber barons, ahem). Or think of a swarm of happily cooperating fire ants stripping the flesh from your bones.

In addition, the author seems unaware that scientists have been updating “Darwin’s model” for over 100 years already, and are unlikely to stop anytime soon. None of that has reached her brain cells, apparently. Saddled with a 19th century view of science, perhaps?

It helps to bang your head gently on the table after reading this kind of thing, I find. If it’s really bad, use padding.

Well, if there is a silver lining to this disaster of an article, it’s the hundreds of people who wrote critical comments – humorous, disparaging, and sometimes just stunned – at on Huffington Post. “Weapons-grade nuttery” was one of my favorites.

Since this is HP UK, it makes sense that 99% of the posters think she’s nuts – your average Brit is better educated and funnier than your average American these days.

Any chance to use another kind of font to print quotes?
I find comic sans too hard to read for text that appeals to critical comprehension.
Comic sans is more a font for entertainment or stuff that does not tax intelligence.

As well as a little Darwin dethroning, a taking down from the pedestal for removal to Newton’s company

They already are almost next-tomb neighbors down in the Abbey…

But you express exactly what I so often think in discussions I have – I work in science and despite having being educated by the evil establishment, really am interested and open minded when someone comes along with paradigm-shifting claims. However, It usually turns out quickly that I am entirely the wrong kind of open minded for them, the kind with critical questions, and logic, and evidence.

So can anyone recommend other sites that do something similar but with a more balanced perspective and are less mired in The Eternal Swamp of Woo?

Talking Points Memo is pretty good. Unfortunately they just pissed off most of their regular readership by essentially getting rid of the comment section (by switching to the detestable Facebook comments). The plus side is that it means I’ll spend a lot less time reading it.

I’m pretty sure that ‘This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius’ is a line from the ’70s stage play “Hair”? Not even a new idea……

It’s much older than that; it goes back at least to the Theosophists of the 1800’s, who were the ancestors of pretty much all of the New Age crap. The idea is that every ~2000 years or so there is a “changing of the age”, which last happened when Jesus came as an incarnation of the World Teacher (Maitreya). Everyone else, of course, got it wrong, and this time the Maitreya was going to come back in the form of someone else and enlighten everyone with even more love and usher in the new age.

If you take Darwinian theory, make a ‘scientific’ principal out of it, put it into political action, then you have something like Nazi Germany

If you put the Theory of Gravity into political action, you have Prague in 1618. Fortunately, the truth of scientific theories is not determined by what apes decide to do with them while grasping for power.

Perhaps a discussion of the discovery of DNA, and how Darwin’s ‘gemmule’ business was way off the mark, even if he was (mostly) correct about natural selection? – ikesolem

It’s really boring when you bring out your “Darwin was wrong about heredity” obsession at every opportunity. We get it. We really do. You think Darwin was vastly over-rated because he didn’t get everything right. We know he didn’t get everything right. Pity just about the only people who agree with you that he’s over-rated are creationists, but that’s life when you’re a crank – it’s only other cranks who take you seriously.

Bosnian pyramids!!!Definitely not bullshit,I mean it is not like it looks like some hill right???

I think Smithsonian Magazine had an article on this a few years back. The ‘Truth’ of the pyramid has become political; calling it ‘just a hill’ could, at least a few years ago, make an academic career in Bosnia rather difficult.

I think Smithsonian Magazine had an article on this a few years back. The ‘Truth’ of the pyramid has become political; calling it ‘just a hill’ could, at least a few years ago, make an academic career in Bosnia rather difficult.
It was done because of Balkanian complex that Slavs have no culture.

Don’t insult Versace (not to mention Hawking) by drawing any comparisons to this twit. I’ve never even heard of her before today, and a fast google search shows her to be a non-entity in the fashion world, with nothing more impressive than a flashy website for her own blog an some minor writing sold to start up quarterlies. She’s just another example of the type of hangers on and friends of friends that the Huffpo gives a platform to. If anything she’s probably thrilled by all the negative attention she’s getting.

“Huffington Post is a mega-sleazy slushpile of credulous crap and unedited stream-of-consciousness burbling from idiots”

No, it’s not. True there’s utter crap like this idiot, and those homaeopathy dummies, but they are in the minority. HuffPo is a handy source of basic news stories, with an avowed and unashamed lefty bias.

The wording of your claim makes you sound like your religidroid critics describing you on the topic of religion. Settle down.